February 2012 - Association of Dutch Businessmen

Business
Interview Richard van Schie
of cargo-partner
Text Frank Kuijsters Photos Cargo-partner
Please introduce yourself; since when do you live in
Singapore, and what made you move here?
I’m Richard van Schie, 40 years young. Married with Ann-
Katrin and I have two kids, Jesper 5 years and Luka 3 years.
We moved end of July 2011 from Cairo, Egypt to Singapore
as I got the opportunity to become the Managing Director
for cargo-partner in Singapore. Prior to our 2,5 years stay in
Cairo we were living in Singapore for 5 years.
Could you provide us with a brief introduction to cargopartner
Logistics and its activities in the region and
specifically Singapore.
cargo-partner is a dynamically growing, mid sized
specialist for transportation and integrated logistics with
particular strength in oversea’s solutions. Being a family
owned company (headquarters in Fischamend/Austria),
our business model is based on personalized and global
partnership with and for our clients.
Besides a very strong network in West & Central
Eastern Europe (CEE) the company is well established
in Asia with locations in China, Hong Kong, India, Korea,
Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and the Middle East.
The activities are mainly in Air and Sea Cargo services
but also logistics activities as Warehousing and Value
Added Logistics are part of the portfolio. As Singapore
is a main location in Asia Pacific with a lot of Regional
Distribution we play a significant role as a LCL hub for our
cargo to/from Asia and CEE. In addition, Singapore plays
as a role in the model-shift of Sea Cargo to Air Cargo from
Asia Pacific to Europe and for Air to Sea Cargo from Europe
into the Asia Pacific region. The last product is especially
interesting for cargo to remote destinations in Asia where
the cargo capacity in airfreight is not existing or limited.
In addition, it gives clients also an option to have lower
transportation cost than pure airfreight but with a little
longer transit time.
In addition to regular Air and Sea Cargo cargo-partner
performs Project Logistics; “out of gauge” cargo with
“strange” dimensions and weight, like pipes, excavators,
mining trucks or small drilling rigs.
When and why did you join cargo-partner Logistics, and
what is your position?
I joined cargo-partner as Managing Director in August last
year. After working with a friendly competitor for 12 years
in several positions, the opportunity came along to run the
cargo-partner office in Singapore. Whilst in Egypt during
the revolution I got infected with the “revolution” virus as
well so I decided to have a small revolution on my own to
leave my company, change role and position and take the
challenge. Although we were living in Singapore before and
thought that the Singapore chapter was closed, we moved
back... Never Say Never....
How important is Asia to cargo-partner Logistics?
Asia is very important to cargo-partner. The main
economies like China and India are in Asia. With the
economy slowing down Intra-Asia traffics are very
important. The Intra-Asia market was not as badly affected
as the Global Economy in total. At the moment about 25%
of our total number of employees are located in Asia and
this will increase over the next years by natural growth
of our current set-up and by developments in “new”
countries.